As that old "Sesame Street" song goes, One of things is not like the others. One of these things just isn't the same.

As you've probably heard by now, what The Onion is apologizing for is a tweet sent during the Academy Awards about the nine-year-old star of "Beasts of the Southern Wild." "Everyone else is afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a [strongly misogynistic word generally reserved for grown women, at least in American usage], right?" read the message from The Onion's official Twitter account. After a hailstorm of complaints, the tweet was deleted. (You can see it here if you care to.)

"Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better," Onion CEO Steve Hannah wrote, vowing to "take immediate steps to discipline those responsible."

But telling comedy writers that they can now be "disciplined" for telling jokes that fall well within The Onion's established parameters, just because a lot of humorless people happened to be paying attention at the moment a particular joke hit -- that's a new low.

Much has been written about how Twitter and other social media platforms lull or tempt users into shooting their mouths off in ways they quickly regret. It turns out it also has the power to induce some people into blurting out apologies they should have swallowed.

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Note: Since several readers seemed to think that where The Onion crossed the line was in targeting a real, specific child with a rude joke, I added a paragraph citing several instances in which it has done so before.